Got the newest Comcast cable modem today. DOCSIS 3.0, whatever that is. This after my wife changed our plan and got something called "Blast". I think it includes 50MB down but I'm not sure. Anyhow, I set up the modem and had no internet, but when I tried a web page I was redirected to a setup page for this new modem. Went through the painless steps and was up and runnig in no time. Here's the thing though. All the ip addresses are 10.x.x.x. While this works well I'd prefer a 192.x.x.x scheme. It appears that I can change this in the modem setup pages but I'm hesitant. I assume I need to be hard wired to the modem for starters. Any thoughts on this? Any reason to get away from the 10.x.x.x scheme?

We're paying $159 for Internet, TV and phone. With taxes and fees it's $179. I'm not happy. And to boot, this blast thing seems no faster than whatever I had previously. Took almost an hour to download the Fedora 17 install DVD iso yesterday afternoon. Did that as a speed test and it proved to be pretty much the same as it always was.

We're paying $159 for Internet, TV and phone. With taxes and fees it's $179. I'm not happy. And to boot, this blast thing seems no faster than whatever I had previously. Took almost an hour to download the Fedora 17 install DVD iso yesterday afternoon. Did that as a speed test and it proved to be pretty much the same as it always was.

I get a big bail of "not happy" with Time-Warner every month. If there was an alternative any faster than morse code I'd switch.

I've got the best I can get for my locality which is "up to" 8Mbs which translates into a real transfer rate of some 6 or 700KB/sec although it can be much slower depending on who I am downloading from.

I reckon to download 1GB in about 45 minutes or so. In fact I've just started a download of Fedora 17 XFCE (670MB) and it reckons to be finished in just over 20 minutes.

Given the speeds your test reckons it's capable of you must be running into some other restriction somewhere.

Of course, it could just be that the particular Fedora mirror that you used restricts download speeds. Never having been able to download faster than 750KB/s I don't have any experience of what is possible with a faster connection.

Your headline rate is some 8 times faster than mine though.........

I assume you were doing a direct download? Over here, some ISP's throttle some services some of the time. I'm thinking about bittorrent in this case.

Of course, it could just be that the particular Fedora mirror that you used restricts download speeds. Never having been able to download faster than 750KB/s I don't have any experience of what is possible with a faster connection.

Your headline rate is some 8 times faster than mine though.........

I assume you were doing a direct download? Over here, some ISP's throttle some services some of the time. I'm thinking about bittorrent in this case.

The download was done with wget to a specific mirror. Maybe I'll try somehting else. Edit: 11 minutes with Transmission / Bittorrent for the i386 DVD.

Most home networking kit seems to default to class C, Class B is what a Windows machine defaults to if there are no other instructions. I've always heard that Class A is aimed at larger organisational use.

However, the main point is that those addresses appear nowhere on the internet and are therefore available for use behind a router.

I've occasionally used the Class A ranges here when I wanted to have a completely separate network and it doesn't make any difference.

Incidentally, my broadband is telephone line based and therefore very dependent on distance from the telephone exchange.

My only experience of cable is of a friend who has cable in a nearby town.

His provider recently advertised a free upgrade for all their customers from 10MB to 20MB.

We ran speedtest software on his connection before and after the upgrade and noticed marginal, or no, improvement.

The providers response was that he was on their old cable network and the higher speeds were only available to those who were on modern segments of their network.

I think the moral of the story is that even with cable you may not get the full advertised rate.

Not having much experience of Cable DSL maybe you can enlighten me. Does speed tend to drop off in any case with distance from the providers equipment?

Not having much experience of Cable DSL maybe you can enlighten me. Does speed tend to drop off in any case with distance from the providers equipment?

I wish I could but I really have no idea. I think one of the biggest factors as far as cable speed is concerned is how many active users are on your particular branch. If there are many users you may see a degradation in your speed. If there aren't many then speeds should be close to advertised. At least that's what I've read.

I just did SpeakEasy again, chosing Washington DC (from Boston) and got 86kbps down. This is the fastest I've seen so far. The downoad of the F17 i386 DVD using bittorrent took about 20 minutes. That is a lot faster than the same download using wget. (I think I already posted that info).